While following the developments of the case, I couldn’t shake one particular realization: we, as a culture, have crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed. We’ve ventured into a new realm of “our right to be informed,” with blurry ethics and questionable motives. This isn’t the culture of media and news that I want to live in, and for the majority of you out there, I think the sentiment is shared.

My time in public relations school taught me that above everything, honesty is necessary when dealing with the media. Journalists are great at sniffing out lies and exposing half-truths. In some twisted sense, it was like we, the would-be junior publicists and communication coordinators of tomorrow, were conditioned to fear the wrath of an angry reporter lest he or she discover we were trying to pull a fast-one on them. It was the “respect me, and I’ll respect you” paradigm. A few isolated experiences aside, this holds true. And really, isn’t this just common sense?

So, how does a major media outlet venture so far from common sense? When does the quest for the story trump the need for ethical standards?

There is always a lesson to be gleaned from these sort of attention grabbing stories, and while I can flush these out for you and impart the various points of consideration, I’ll leave it to you to decide what the moral of this scandal should be. I welcome your insights in our comment section.

For me, it’s as simple as something my kindergarten teacher told me, “telling the truth may hurt a bit, but it goes away. Lies hurt for a really, really long time.”

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favourite things.”

The box cuter slits the packing tape open and the generic brown cardboard box springs open and releases bright coloured confetti and streamers. Ok  maybe there wasn’t confetti and streamers when I opened the case of The Jewels of Sofia Tate, which arrived from the printer’s this afternoon, but there should have been. Every book deserves to be celebrated – it took a lot of work, patience, and time – from manuscript submission to copy-editing to final checks and every step in between – to get it to this place.  Despite the many, many boxes of newly arrived books that I have cracked opened I still get excited when a new book arrives. It’s neat to see a book in it’s final form especially if you’ve been dealing with galleys or ARCs of them, which are often not in the same format as the final book and have different cover treatment. One of the best parts of my job is presenting an author with their book. Often, if an author is local, they will drop by the office and pick up their author copies, and the look on their face, especially the first time authors, is priceless. 

So what happens after I open the boxes? Well after digging through way too much packing paper I take out the books and do a walk around the office and give one copy to each staff member. One of the neat things of distributing the books is seeing everyone’s reactions, which range from delight that the book has come in on time to “oh another book” to a mini debate erupting about the cover and our thoughts about it. One copy is put on display in our reception area and the rest are shelved in our storage cabinets for, mostly, publicity to use.  These extra copies will be mostly used for media requests, prizes for contests, and for reference. Today, my copy of Sofia comes into my slightly messy office and joins  Dancing in the Sky, Grave Doubts, Outside the Line, Hat Trick, and Outcasts, which are on display on the top shelf of my desk.

If you are watching, and we definitely hope you are — look out for a major change right here on Defining Canada in about a month (possibly less, possibly more…).

Dundurn’s booth at Book Expo Canada last year – Cordelia Strube was signing Planet Reese.

Book Expo Canada News!

If you happen to be at Book Expo Canada this weekend, feel free to drop by our booth. Our publicity and marketing team has done an outstanding job preparing for the upcoming two days of (almost) non-stop action and giveaways which we hope you will partake in! From what I’ve heard and seen in the office, there will be plenty of author signings, [low-tech] personality quizzes, a contest, and plenty of flair!

If don’t have the opportunity to drop by, don’t worry — you’ll have a chance to see and hear from a few Dundurn authors once we regroup after the exhibition, and start posting some neat content for you to enjoy.